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A routine is work a bot repeats on a schedule: every weekday morning, pull the report; during business hours, watch the queue; on Friday, check the release page. Routines belong to a bot you own, and the panel describes them as Recurring tasks this bot runs in your local weekday hours. The important thing about a routine is that it is not a canned action. Each run is a complete bot turn, with the bot’s full set of tools, its memory, its skills and its computer. This page covers creating one, how the schedule is interpreted, what a run actually does, pausing and deleting, seeing every bot’s routines together, and sharing a schedule with someone else.

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Create a routine

Open the bot and go to its Routines panel. An empty panel reads No routines yet.
1

Choose Create routine

The form is short on purpose. While the list loads you see Loading routines….
2

Give it a Name

This is the label you will recognise in the list and on the week grid.
3

Answer What should it do?

Write plain intent, the way you would write a message to the bot. This text becomes the instruction the run starts from, so it should stand on its own without the context of a conversation you had last week.
4

Set From (hour) and Until (hour)

Whole hours from 0 to 23. Anything else is refused with Weekday hours must be whole hours from 0 to 23.
5

Save routine

Cancel backs out. If the routine cannot be created you get The routine could not be created. and nothing is scheduled.
The bot can also create a routine for itself. Asking it in the conversation to do something every weekday morning is enough: scheduling is one of its own tools, and it passes your intent rather than a schedule written in code. It is one of the tools that never stops to ask for approval, so it can set one up mid-turn.

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When a routine runs

A routine that runs on a set date rather than on weekdays is handled separately: it is listed under Scheduled by date rather than drawn on the weekday grid, because These run on a set date, not a weekday, so they are not on the grid above. A routine can also be triggered by an event instead of by the clock. Cortex supports event routines driven by Slack and GitHub activity, so a run can start when something happens rather than at a fixed hour.

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What a run actually does

A run is a full turn, started by the schedule rather than by you, and Cortex marks it as such so you can tell a scheduled run from something you asked for. Four things follow from that.
  • The bot has everything. Its memory, its enabled skills, its connected apps and its computer. If the computer is asleep, the run brings it back before the work starts. See Computer.
  • Approvals still apply. A consequential step inside a run parks behind Allow, Deny or Always, exactly as it would in a conversation. A routine does not quietly gain permission because you were not watching. If a run parks while you are away it waits for you, and the bot’s row in the sidebar shows the pending marker. See Approvals and tool policy.
  • The turn rules are the same. There is no round limit, but the fifteen-minute turn deadline holds. A run that hits the deadline ends there and the work it already did stays. Long jobs belong in a background task inside the run: see Tasks and subagents.
  • You hear about it if you asked to. Cortex tells you when a run finishes, when it needs a decision, and when an automation ran, and a bot’s Notify me setting decides whether that reaches you. See Notifications.
Each routine keeps a record of its runs, so you can check whether a schedule has actually been firing rather than guessing from the conversation.

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Pause, resume and delete

If a change does not stick you get That change could not be saved., and a failed removal reads The routine could not be deleted. In both cases the routine is left as it was. Your routines follow the account rather than the device, so the web app and the Bot desktop app show the same list.

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See every routine at once

The Routines action at the top of the Bot sidebar opens an account-wide week grid: This week's routines in your local timezone. Pause, resume, or add one. The Computer rail still lists the open bot's routines.
  • Previous week, This week and Next week move the grid.
  • New creates a routine from here. The form asks for the Bot, a Name and an Instruction, then Create.
  • Pause and Resume work on the grid as they do in the panel. A failure reads The routine could not be updated.
  • Date-bound routines are listed below the grid under Scheduled by date.
  • With nothing scheduled you get No routines this week and Create a routine for a bot you own. Sharing a schedule is a different surface.

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Share a schedule

A routine can be handed to someone else with Share, which is offered as Share this schedule. The recipient sees Shared schedule and chooses Add to my bot, which puts a copy of the schedule on a bot of theirs.
Copied schedules start paused. A copy never begins running on its own, so the recipient chooses Resume when they are ready. Sharing a schedule is a separate surface from sharing a bot: see Share a bot.

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Routines, tasks and scheduled prompts

Three different things, easily confused, each on its own surface.